Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, has said he hopes the Territorial Army will be renamed the Army Reserve and become an "integral part of the regular army". He said on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show that "when the opportunity for legislation comes along, we will change the name".

The size of the regular army, he said, was being cut to 82,000 and "unfortunately" it was a step the Ministry of Defence had to take to "rebalance" its budget. "The way we've restructured the army is with a focus on the front end," he said, adding that TA units were already being issued with regular uniforms, radios, protective equipment and vehicles.

He said: "We are changing the pattern of equipment and kit, bringing them in line with the regular army with whom they will train and work, and under our new construct each territorial battalion will be paired with a regular army battalion, so they will be in a permanent twinning arrangement." Hammond added he hoped to make it "more attractive" for former soldiers to complete a period in the Army Reserve, saying it would help with numbers and "helps to change the ethos" of the Army Reserve.

Commenting on reports that serving soldiers could march on parliament in protest against the government's defence cuts and to coincide with a parliamentary debate on army cuts, Hammond said: "If they turned up in uniform and tried to march towards parliament, that would obviously be very serious.

"I think what's actually going to happen is that a few ex-officers from this particular battalion are going to turn up, sit in the public gallery and watch the debate and they are absolutely welcome to do so and I would be astonished if ex-officers didn't want to do that."